7 ms·

OpenPlotter

158 points by slow_typist 3y ago

benob 3y ago
Is the rpi rated for environments with high humidity? Shouldn't it be in a water resistant enclosure?
- brk 3y ago
  They’re surprisingly resilient actually. I had one on my last boat (though in a space that was primarily air conditioned all the time. Had another on my balcony running a Marine Traffic AIS station for 6 years that was ‘weatherproofed’ with an unsealed ziploc bag. No issues.
  - codefoster 3y ago
    And incredibly cheap/easy to replace.
pnut 3y ago
HN crowd maybe doesn't appreciate it, but the marine sensor networking world, route plotting, and related tasks are an atrocious cesspool of overpriced, weirdly incompatible proprietary solutions. Regular people save literally tens of thousands of dollars per install by going open source in this space, and end up with superior toolkits.
- kepa 3y ago
  I won't say we ended up with anything superior, but we definitely benefited on cost as you mention! We have an intro writeup of our experience using OpenPlotter and a Raspberry Pi-based setup here. https://sailingcourage.xyz/projects/plotter/ https://sailingcourage.xyz/projects/plotter/ Something also not often realized is that many, many sailboats are actually quite old (20, 30, 50 years!) and so are their on-board electronics. Any chance to update wiring, instruments, diagram out on-board electronics, etc. is probably a really good opportunity for nav system and overall boat maintenance.
- Difwif 3y ago
  And for anyone wondering about an opportunity to shake up the market just estimate TAM and you'll see quickly why boat stuff is priced at such a premium. The number of people using things like Open plotter is even smaller, but still greatly appreciated by all!
  - Solvency 3y ago
    I'm confused why does this mean no one can Carplay-ify the plotter/charting world for boats?
    - Kozmik1 3y ago
      Making CarPlay for boats would not be so hard, but making Waze for recreational boats might be. But if you have ideas on that and are sure you can avoid directing people into deadly obstacles, considering all sea and weather conditions, in all kinds of boats, give it a go!
      - balp 3y ago
        All commercial plotters have autorouting. There is automatic wind routing for sailing in OpenCPN (as a plugin). I'm not sure that adding it to a phone with carplay is a viable option. If you have a display to show it on, it's probably a display for a plotter with all the functionality, including map updates over the internet. Thou for entertainment it's an other side, that would be useful.
    - detourdog 3y ago
      Mostly sailors are very conservative and the technology has to be bulletproof. The saying goes that Murphy was an optimistic sailor. Plotters are a marriage of RADAR and paper charts. The technical integrations are really no trouble for the average system administrator. The problem comes about with the challenges of the environment and the uniqueness of every installation. The market is also small. I think the estimate is around 10,000 yachts actively moving around the world. Another issue is that there are very few makers or the technology. I think it's a great area for development because it is immature and in the middle of technical upheaval that nobody really knows what how great a plotter could be.
- Kozmik1 3y ago
  In the US Commercial Tug & Barge market, Rose Point Navigation (out of Redmond, WA) has a near 100% saturation of the navigation software market. Why does nobody disrupt them? The overlap between experts in software and experts in vessel navigation is pretty low. Take a look at the technical specifications of their platform here and see if you can crack that out in a weekend: https://www.rosepoint.com/rose-point-ecs/ https://www.rosepoint.com/rose-point-ecs/ In recreational vessels, our needs are more basic, but even us geeks may be more prone to shell out $500 - $2000 to Garmin or Raymarine for a hardened chart plotter MFD that "just works", is waterproof, and robust at least in the nav function. I got a "deal" on a Raymarine Axiom Pro which has both touchscreen and a keypad mode for when the rain interferes with the display, has nav, ais, radar, sonar display, engine gauges, and tons of other features, it is running some version of Android. It's really good honestly. When the wind is howling and the waves are high, it's not necessarily a good time to do some hacking and bug hunting on the nav platform. I do plenty hacking on my boat in the sensor integration world, but that's another story...
  - Solvency 3y ago
    Why are the color palettes used in these maps always so ugly? And they're not even color blind proof either!
    - _kb 3y ago
      Because the colours are standardised and embed important information. These are tools, not aesthetic objects. A lot of the palette is preserved from paper charts where they need to be readable under red light when underway at night. For a masterpiece of technical documentation dig up a copy of admiralty chart 5011 for a dive into the colours and symbology used.
    - balp 3y ago
      It's an international standard so all professionals that read the maps never have to guess what the colors mean. In commercial vessels, you need to follow the Solas standards. This also means that you need certified hardware and software for the chart plotters.
- sails 3y ago
  People get pretty far with tablet apps these days (literally), and there is a good market for the development of the apps. Hardware integration is always the challenge. See 59-north for examples of offshore sailing schools who seem to have found a good mix of modern and reliable https://www.sailmagazine.com/cruising/navigating-by-tablet https://www.sailmagazine.com/cruising/navigating-by-tablet The only thing I don’t like about a tablet is that it will ruin your night vision. Integrated marine electronics usually cater to that pretty well.
  - bergie 3y ago
    Depends on the tablet navigation software you use. Orca has a very decent night mode.
tamimio 3y ago
My engineering sense says RPi isn’t a good choice here, there’s a lot of potential failures that could happen, from a corrupted sd card, to overheating, harsh environment, among others, an industrial mini PC with proper protection and resources as well would be far better.
- tylerflick 3y ago
  I was thinking the same thing, but then realized they may be using the GPIO pins. Even then you could get away with a usb wired micro.
  - tamimio 3y ago
    > then realized they may be using the GPIO pins A lot of industrial ones come with GPIO built in, some even follow the same rpi pinout.
    - maxerickson 3y ago
      Right, the rpi has the GPIO pins because they are a common feature on the microprocessors in the space.
- nine_k 3y ago
  They are heavily invested into using GPIO: https://openplotter.readthedocs.io/en/latest/getting_started/downloading.html#desktop-and-laptop https://openplotter.readthedocs.io/en/latest/getting_started... I wonder if industrial-strength RPi clones / variants exist. The demand is certainly there.
  - tamimio 3y ago
    As I said in the other comment, there are already industrial PCs equipped with GPIO, and some models even include an integrated screen SBCs are good in conditions where reliability is not the primary concern - scenarios where frequent restarts are needed, change sd card, room temperature etc.), but in a boat? I don’t know anything about marine conditions but having a malfunctioning in SD cards and overheating is not uncommon in robotics and especially in drones (where it’s harder to use full fledged PC), few times actually the SD card died midair, no crashes thankfully.
Solvency 3y ago
I have always wondered why, in the world of millionaires and billionaires and yachts, why plotters like these have such ancient ugly 80s graphics. There are literally decades of UI enhancements, both functional and cosmetic, that could modernize these things. Im talking about the elite of the elite who will spare no expense at bespoke designed watches, monogram clothes, cars, etc. So it always just boggles my mind why this class of software languishes is in mediocrity. and you would think there would be thousands of developers eager to work on something like this. Being able to actually test ride boats, and live a more adventuous lifestyle while putting their engineering skills to practice.
- brk 3y ago
  In that class of boat, the owner is not the one operating it. Many times they literally wouldn’t even know how to start the engines much less interact with the ships systems.
  - Solvency 3y ago
    Still, think 1M+ speed and luxury boats, etc.
    - traceroute66 3y ago
      > Still, think 1M+ speed and luxury boats, etc Even in that class of boat the owner will typically have a coxswain on his beck and call whenever he fancies going on a jolly. Some people have chauffeurs, others have a boat and coxswain ... sometimes the coxswain doubles up as chauffeur if the owner isn't quite rich enough to employ more than one person.
    - brk 3y ago
      Then you'll see MFDs from Garmin, Raymarine, etc. I had Raymarine Axiom's on my last boat and they were pretty modern. You could display charts, radar, sonor, engine data, all mixed and matched on various layouts. I could even watch Netflix at the helm if I wanted.
alexburke19 3y ago
Signal K is an open source server / data format for marine electronics, often paired with OpenPlotter for building custom nav and monitoring systems with web standards (JSON, Websockets and HTTP). http://signalk.org/ http://signalk.org/ Has an excellent community of developers and hardware components.
- nomand 3y ago
  As a "sailor in tech", "web standards" do not belong anywhere near an ocean going vessel.
  - kortilla 3y ago
    This kind of attitude is toxic. If you have complaints about specific protocols, formats, etc, please share them.
    - nomand 3y ago
      Your labeling is only a reflection of the shape of the lens you have on the world. I'm not interested in feeding that.
      - kortilla 3y ago
        It’s your labeling that put “web standards” into one bucket. I assure you many of those web standards are far more secure and well tested for not only failure cases but also adversaries than what exists in marine systems.
        nomand 3y ago
        You're right. #notallwebstandards
  - mlyle 3y ago
    I wouldn't use HTTP/json for any path that needs to close a control loop at hundreds of Hz, but to loosely couple a bunch of systems in a plant? No problem. If you have a specific concern, explain it, instead of just exuding judgment.
matteocarnelos 3y ago
With the sailing team of the University of Padova we developed SailTrack: https://github.com/metisvela/sailtrack https://github.com/metisvela/sailtrack It’s a similar project, but specifically designed for racing dinghies. It focuses on modularity and performance analysis.
SergeAx 3y ago
What is the market for actual digital charts for this plotter?

OpenPlotter

158 points by slow_typist 3y ago

benob 3y ago

Is the rpi rated for environments with high humidity? Shouldn't it be in a water resistant enclosure?

brk 3y ago
They’re surprisingly resilient actually. I had one on my last boat (though in a space that was primarily air conditioned all the time. Had another on my balcony running a Marine Traffic AIS station for 6 years that was ‘weatherproofed’ with an unsealed ziploc bag. No issues.
- codefoster 3y ago
  And incredibly cheap/easy to replace.

pnut 3y ago

HN crowd maybe doesn't appreciate it, but the marine sensor networking world, route plotting, and related tasks are an atrocious cesspool of overpriced, weirdly incompatible proprietary solutions. Regular people save literally tens of thousands of dollars per install by going open source in this space, and end up with superior toolkits.

kepa 3y ago
I won't say we ended up with anything superior, but we definitely benefited on cost as you mention! We have an intro writeup of our experience using OpenPlotter and a Raspberry Pi-based setup here. https://sailingcourage.xyz/projects/plotter/ https://sailingcourage.xyz/projects/plotter/ Something also not often realized is that many, many sailboats are actually quite old (20, 30, 50 years!) and so are their on-board electronics. Any chance to update wiring, instruments, diagram out on-board electronics, etc. is probably a really good opportunity for nav system and overall boat maintenance.
Difwif 3y ago
And for anyone wondering about an opportunity to shake up the market just estimate TAM and you'll see quickly why boat stuff is priced at such a premium. The number of people using things like Open plotter is even smaller, but still greatly appreciated by all!
- Solvency 3y ago
  I'm confused why does this mean no one can Carplay-ify the plotter/charting world for boats?
  - Kozmik1 3y ago
    Making CarPlay for boats would not be so hard, but making Waze for recreational boats might be. But if you have ideas on that and are sure you can avoid directing people into deadly obstacles, considering all sea and weather conditions, in all kinds of boats, give it a go!
    - balp 3y ago
      All commercial plotters have autorouting. There is automatic wind routing for sailing in OpenCPN (as a plugin). I'm not sure that adding it to a phone with carplay is a viable option. If you have a display to show it on, it's probably a display for a plotter with all the functionality, including map updates over the internet. Thou for entertainment it's an other side, that would be useful.
  - detourdog 3y ago
    Mostly sailors are very conservative and the technology has to be bulletproof. The saying goes that Murphy was an optimistic sailor. Plotters are a marriage of RADAR and paper charts. The technical integrations are really no trouble for the average system administrator. The problem comes about with the challenges of the environment and the uniqueness of every installation. The market is also small. I think the estimate is around 10,000 yachts actively moving around the world. Another issue is that there are very few makers or the technology. I think it's a great area for development because it is immature and in the middle of technical upheaval that nobody really knows what how great a plotter could be.
Kozmik1 3y ago
In the US Commercial Tug & Barge market, Rose Point Navigation (out of Redmond, WA) has a near 100% saturation of the navigation software market. Why does nobody disrupt them? The overlap between experts in software and experts in vessel navigation is pretty low. Take a look at the technical specifications of their platform here and see if you can crack that out in a weekend: https://www.rosepoint.com/rose-point-ecs/ https://www.rosepoint.com/rose-point-ecs/ In recreational vessels, our needs are more basic, but even us geeks may be more prone to shell out $500 - $2000 to Garmin or Raymarine for a hardened chart plotter MFD that "just works", is waterproof, and robust at least in the nav function. I got a "deal" on a Raymarine Axiom Pro which has both touchscreen and a keypad mode for when the rain interferes with the display, has nav, ais, radar, sonar display, engine gauges, and tons of other features, it is running some version of Android. It's really good honestly. When the wind is howling and the waves are high, it's not necessarily a good time to do some hacking and bug hunting on the nav platform. I do plenty hacking on my boat in the sensor integration world, but that's another story...
- Solvency 3y ago
  Why are the color palettes used in these maps always so ugly? And they're not even color blind proof either!
  - _kb 3y ago
    Because the colours are standardised and embed important information. These are tools, not aesthetic objects. A lot of the palette is preserved from paper charts where they need to be readable under red light when underway at night. For a masterpiece of technical documentation dig up a copy of admiralty chart 5011 for a dive into the colours and symbology used.
  - balp 3y ago
    It's an international standard so all professionals that read the maps never have to guess what the colors mean. In commercial vessels, you need to follow the Solas standards. This also means that you need certified hardware and software for the chart plotters.
sails 3y ago
People get pretty far with tablet apps these days (literally), and there is a good market for the development of the apps. Hardware integration is always the challenge. See 59-north for examples of offshore sailing schools who seem to have found a good mix of modern and reliable https://www.sailmagazine.com/cruising/navigating-by-tablet https://www.sailmagazine.com/cruising/navigating-by-tablet The only thing I don’t like about a tablet is that it will ruin your night vision. Integrated marine electronics usually cater to that pretty well.
- bergie 3y ago
  Depends on the tablet navigation software you use. Orca has a very decent night mode.

tamimio 3y ago

My engineering sense says RPi isn’t a good choice here, there’s a lot of potential failures that could happen, from a corrupted sd card, to overheating, harsh environment, among others, an industrial mini PC with proper protection and resources as well would be far better.

tylerflick 3y ago
I was thinking the same thing, but then realized they may be using the GPIO pins. Even then you could get away with a usb wired micro.
- tamimio 3y ago
  > then realized they may be using the GPIO pins A lot of industrial ones come with GPIO built in, some even follow the same rpi pinout.
  - maxerickson 3y ago
    Right, the rpi has the GPIO pins because they are a common feature on the microprocessors in the space.
nine_k 3y ago
They are heavily invested into using GPIO: https://openplotter.readthedocs.io/en/latest/getting_started/downloading.html#desktop-and-laptop https://openplotter.readthedocs.io/en/latest/getting_started... I wonder if industrial-strength RPi clones / variants exist. The demand is certainly there.
- tamimio 3y ago
  As I said in the other comment, there are already industrial PCs equipped with GPIO, and some models even include an integrated screen SBCs are good in conditions where reliability is not the primary concern - scenarios where frequent restarts are needed, change sd card, room temperature etc.), but in a boat? I don’t know anything about marine conditions but having a malfunctioning in SD cards and overheating is not uncommon in robotics and especially in drones (where it’s harder to use full fledged PC), few times actually the SD card died midair, no crashes thankfully.

Solvency 3y ago

I have always wondered why, in the world of millionaires and billionaires and yachts, why plotters like these have such ancient ugly 80s graphics. There are literally decades of UI enhancements, both functional and cosmetic, that could modernize these things. Im talking about the elite of the elite who will spare no expense at bespoke designed watches, monogram clothes, cars, etc. So it always just boggles my mind why this class of software languishes is in mediocrity. and you would think there would be thousands of developers eager to work on something like this. Being able to actually test ride boats, and live a more adventuous lifestyle while putting their engineering skills to practice.

brk 3y ago
In that class of boat, the owner is not the one operating it. Many times they literally wouldn’t even know how to start the engines much less interact with the ships systems.
- Solvency 3y ago
  Still, think 1M+ speed and luxury boats, etc.
  - traceroute66 3y ago
    > Still, think 1M+ speed and luxury boats, etc Even in that class of boat the owner will typically have a coxswain on his beck and call whenever he fancies going on a jolly. Some people have chauffeurs, others have a boat and coxswain ... sometimes the coxswain doubles up as chauffeur if the owner isn't quite rich enough to employ more than one person.
  - brk 3y ago
    Then you'll see MFDs from Garmin, Raymarine, etc. I had Raymarine Axiom's on my last boat and they were pretty modern. You could display charts, radar, sonor, engine data, all mixed and matched on various layouts. I could even watch Netflix at the helm if I wanted.

alexburke19 3y ago

Signal K is an open source server / data format for marine electronics, often paired with OpenPlotter for building custom nav and monitoring systems with web standards (JSON, Websockets and HTTP). http://signalk.org/ http://signalk.org/ Has an excellent community of developers and hardware components.

nomand 3y ago
As a "sailor in tech", "web standards" do not belong anywhere near an ocean going vessel.
- kortilla 3y ago
  This kind of attitude is toxic. If you have complaints about specific protocols, formats, etc, please share them.
  - nomand 3y ago
    Your labeling is only a reflection of the shape of the lens you have on the world. I'm not interested in feeding that.
    - kortilla 3y ago
      It’s your labeling that put “web standards” into one bucket. I assure you many of those web standards are far more secure and well tested for not only failure cases but also adversaries than what exists in marine systems.
      - nomand 3y ago
        You're right. #notallwebstandards
- mlyle 3y ago
  I wouldn't use HTTP/json for any path that needs to close a control loop at hundreds of Hz, but to loosely couple a bunch of systems in a plant? No problem. If you have a specific concern, explain it, instead of just exuding judgment.

matteocarnelos 3y ago

With the sailing team of the University of Padova we developed SailTrack: https://github.com/metisvela/sailtrack https://github.com/metisvela/sailtrack It’s a similar project, but specifically designed for racing dinghies. It focuses on modularity and performance analysis.

SergeAx 3y ago

What is the market for actual digital charts for this plotter?